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RIP: The Perl Journal

Posted by chrisd on from the tpj-was-good-for-perl dept.

mbadolato writes "I'm surprised this hasn't been reported yet. Over at use.perl they're reporting that when the current issue of SysAdmin comes out, this will be the last installment of The Perl Journal. It's a shame. TPJ originally was stopped as a stand-alone, but was then included into Sysadmin. Now that's going too. We all owe a big thanks to all the contributers, and to Jon Orwant, for providing us a great resource in TPJ over the years."

32 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. Request it back to the community? by jukal · · Score: 2

    I have not followed the magazine a lot, but I remember reading it back in 1996, or maybe 1997. Back then, I got the impression that there was some ( a lot ) volunteer effort behind it back then. Could they, like, open source it - and maybe minimize the financial risk involved to it, I understood that they have been making some losses because of it. They could eZine it, and see if it could fly again. Costs would be minimal, or zero to them, just giving out the brand, basicly. It's a shame if a classic like this just disappears.

    1. Re:Request it back to the community? by jukal · · Score: 5, Interesting
      this comp.lang.perl.misc posting by Jon Orwant who started the magazine together with Tom Christiansen in 1996, gives some insight how the dilemma started. This is just a short clip:

      "there's no shortage of content out there, and the magazine could easily go bimonthly and then monthly -- indeed, when EarthWeb acquired TPJ I had thought that was the plan.".

      Apparently, TPJ was just in wrong place at wrong time, and fall to a vacuum because of that.

    2. Re:Request it back to the community? by jukal · · Score: 2
      > Strange as it might seem to me I still like paper copies of magazines which I can read away from my monitor

      I agree. However, it would not need to be only an eZine, they could also sell some company the rights to print it, and take just some percent of the possible profits. What could they loose? :)

  2. The Perl Review by mir · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Perl Review is exactly what you describe: a Perl journal, distributed only as PDF at the moment. The publishers hope to get it on paper one day, but they wanted to get it started., so the first 5 issues are already available.

    --
    Look, that's why there's rules, understand? So that you think before you break 'em. (Terry Pratchett)
  3. Sad News by jamieo · · Score: 2, Interesting

    This is really sad. I've subscribed to TPJ since about issue 3 and have all the issues. The SysAdmin deal was welcome, but only to keep it alive.

    TPJ was such a valuable resource for me as a perl hacker. You learned so much from each issue and people always contributed interesting articles.

    Seems like my 2 year subscription will now be for SysAdmin - something that I'm not really interested in :(

  4. Fantasy economics... by MosesJones · · Score: 2

    They could eZine it, and see if it could fly again. Costs would be minimal, or zero to them

    Lets see if that flys shall we. Costs for an eZine.

    1) Hosting, dependent on load, lets say a basic package with minimal bandwidth $100pm

    2) Time, upload, updated editing, Content Management, configuration. Lets say 4 days a month, effective cost of $200 a day. Sure people can help out, but it still hits the daily job

    So we are already running at nearly a $1,000pm and we haven't even started trying. Bandwidth requirements goes up (a slashdotting a month should do it) and suddenly you are shelling out over 20k a year.

    e != free, haven't we all seen enough .coms implode to know that ?

    --
    An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
    1. Re:Fantasy economics... by jukal · · Score: 2
      > 1) Hosting, dependent on load, lets say a basic package with minimal bandwidth $100pm

      Hosting, dependant on load (if load < insane) zero. Get a sponsor. There's still a lot of companies that want the attention of Perl users.

      > 2) Time, upload, updated editing, Content Management, configuration. Lets say 4 days a month, effective cost of $200 a day. Sure people can help out, but it still hits the daily job

      I agree on this cost.

      > So we are already running at nearly a $1,000pm and we haven't even started trying

      Let's assume the cost would be that $1000 per month. Now, you got an eZine, and the brand of Linux Journal. You give printing permissions for a 3rd party, who sells paper-print copies of it and gives 5% of revenues to you. Can you cover the costs? I don't know, but I don't think it's fantasy economics either.

    2. Re:Fantasy economics... by jukal · · Score: 2
      > and the brand of Linux Journal....

      Eeek. I was looking at that magazine on my desk. I meant Perl Journal ofcourse. I know, I am going to be flamed for this :))

  5. Periodicals are advertising supported... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...and advertising revenue is directly proportional to the receptiveness of the target audience. An audience more impressed by colors and pictures - in other words, less so than by actual information - means more total advertising revenue, and more available revenue means more players in the market.

    This is why you don't see many print periodicals for serious work tools (*BSD, Perl, GCC) and you see mountains of them for toys (Windows, .NET, Visual Basic).

    This isn't sad news. It simply means that the Perl community's priorities are where they belong.

    1. Re:Periodicals are advertising supported... by Sargent1 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Advertising revenue is directly proportional to the audience of the magazine and its demographic makeup. A distant third, barely visible on the horizon, is the audience's perceived receptiveness to advertising.

      You mention that there are mountains of magazines for "toys" such as Windows, .Net, and VB, and insinuate that that's because people there like ooh pretty shiny things over content. I counterclaim that a) it's because the audience for such magazines is vastly larger than that for *BSD, Perl, or GCC, leading to far more advertising revenue than is possible for a magazine centered on any of the latter three things, and b) the size of the audience is in large part determined by how little most people are willing to pay for documentation about Open Source software. "I can always just read the man pages or check Google and Google Groups. Why would I pay for a print magazine?"

      To top it off, what advertisers are going to be buying ad space in your hypothetical GCC magazine? "Richard Stallman, live and uncensored, on the hot new tape, When Gurus Go Wild!"

      It's not about content versus pretty pictures; it's about audience size and how much of that audience is willing to pay for things.

    2. Re:Periodicals are advertising supported... by Pfhreakaz0id · · Score: 2

      Pay for things? but I want it all for free/Free!
      and somehow, I want to make money for doing it for free/Free.

      --
      DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
    3. Re:Periodicals are advertising supported... by pmz · · Score: 3, Insightful

      It's not about content versus pretty pictures; it's about audience size and how much of that audience is willing to pay for things.

      I still agree with the parent post. Most technical print magazines have very little useful content. The only reasons I keep a magazine subscription going is to know what the buzzwords-of-the-month are and to see what the hot-products-of-the-month are. In this respect, the advertisements are actually the content.

      Quite honestly, if I were to take the things I see in a magazine seriously, I would have a record number of failed projects that no one else can maintain to claim responsibility for. The fact is, if a magazine publishes something as a bold-faced headline, odds are that technology is so immature or vaporous that it will disappear into obscurity before I even understand what it is. This is true for nearly any technology domain, regardless of which company is backing the brand names and acronyms.

      Conclusion: magazines are good for buzzwords and "the bleeding edge", but look elsewhere for things on which one can risk a reputation.

      --
      Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
    4. Re:Periodicals are advertising supported... by BrookHarty · · Score: 2

      ...and advertising revenue is directly proportional to the receptiveness of the target audience. An audience more impressed by colors and pictures - in other words, less so than by actual information - means more total advertising revenue, and more available revenue means more players in the market.

      Easy solution, Post naked pictures of CowBoy Neal, the slashdot crowd would all buy one, thats a million copies right there! ;)

      Hehe, seriously, I enjoyed the TPJ also, but i only play with perl, I dont do it for a living. I enjoyed the articles for the learning experience. In fact, I read the changelogs for gcc/perl/bsd/linux just to see what is "Really" going on, thats what I like about slashdot and freshmeat, to announce new releases.

  6. What will replace Perl Journal ? by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 2



    With Perl Journal gone, what will replace it ?!

    I hope not ".Net Journal".

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  7. Re:The Community by jukal · · Score: 2
    > Is a myth.

    Here's a myth for you from perl.org site:
    "over 1,000,000 Perl programmers around the world "

  8. Re:Breaking news! by SaraSmith · · Score: 2, Funny

    ...when someone started using lines from movies... and it was a bad movie.. and one that people quote all the time... removing comedic value from it... like totally!

  9. The Perl Journal story .. in Perl! by wackybrit · · Score: 5, Funny

    First the money went..

    $tpj =~ s/\$//g;

    So two magazines merged..

    $sysadmin .= $tpj;

    The advertising slump hit hard..

    $sysadmin =~ s/ActiveState/Make Money Fast!/g;

    And eventually they lost money merged together too.

    $sysadmin =~ s/\$//g;

    The arse totally fell out of the operation.

    $sysadmin =~ s/.//g;

    So they shut up shop.

    exit;

    --
    mogorific carpentry experiments
  10. IOPCC? by GMontag451 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So does this mean that the IOPCC (International Obfuscated Perl Code Contest) is defunct? Reading the winners from that and trying to figure out what they do was something I always looked forward to each year.

    1. Re:IOPCC? by tzanger · · Score: 2

      Do you think that Chinese is obfuscated because you can't read it? (assuming you don't know chinese...)

      You're saying the winners of the IOPCC are not difficult to read? Christ man, I am glad you don't write code for me. Properly structured, well organized Perl is exceedingly clear. IOPCC entries are not.

    2. Re:IOPCC? by OrangeTrafficCone · · Score: 2, Interesting
      As the most recent Best of Show (2000) recipient, I am very saddened to hear of TPJ's demise: it robs me of defending my title with this sort of stuff:

      $;=q(,225:332.711,242.913,233:543:253:357:777,233: 626;422:345);
      $,=length($0.$^T);$:=join"",map{chr(hex("2$_"))}sp lit(//,"dbfa");
      for(unpack("A4"x++$,,$;)){eval"y|.:;,|$:|";($,,@,) =split(//,$_);
      print chr(ord('`')+eval join($,,@,));}print"\n";

      This contest gave me an outlet to keep my production code from complete incomprehensibility.
      I have been cooking up entries for over a year now, waiting to hear the opening bell for the next contest, which it appears will now not ring.

      P.S.: if anyone wants to see Yahtzee implemented in less than 1k, drop me a mail.

    3. Re:IOPCC? by GMontag451 · · Score: 2

      You wouldn't think so if you saw the contest winners. They make normal Perl look like Cobol. Line noise looks more readable than most of the entries.

    4. Re:IOPCC? by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      (* So does this mean that the IOPCC {International Obfuscated Perl Code Contest} is defunct? Reading the winners from that and trying to figure out what they do was something I always looked forward to each year. *)

      That reinforces my theory that Perl fans *like* obfuscated code. If something is too easy to read, then Perl fans get bored.

      Nothing wrong with that. Everybody's boat floats on different water.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  11. Perhaps... by ldopa1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Perhaps the reason that nobody has reported it is that very few people read it in the first place, and as such, very few people care.

    This may also be the reason that they aren't going to be continuing with the journal in the first place, don't you think?

    I doubt few people lamented the end of the Ultrix journal....

    --
    The Dopester
    "Yes, I'm a Karma Whore, but I'm doing it to pay my way through school."
    1. Re:Perhaps... by mosch · · Score: 2

      Indeed, far more people will read of the passing of TPJ than ever subscribed to it. At the end of the year 2001, The Perl Journal had a circulation of 16,000 including newsstands.

    2. Re:Perhaps... by erat · · Score: 2

      Thank you for pointing out what so many folks seem to have missed: the thing is dying because it isn't popular.

      Of course, I'm still waiting for someone here to pull a Loki and insist that we all must dig into our pockets and make donations to keep it going even if we don't care about the stuff. It'll happen...

    3. Re:Perhaps... by Chundra · · Score: 2

      I subscribed to TPJ back when it was TPJ. It used to be a nice journal until Sysadmin took over. They had clever/funny covers, good articles, and all was nice. Then it became pretty corporate feeling when Sysadmin was publishing it, with more advertisements than articles. The number of pages dropped, and the cool covers disappeared. It basically turned to shit, minus the occasional article from the oldtimers. That's why I don't care now. I *did* care that it was going under way back when, before Sysadmin started publishing it.

  12. No Real Surprise by elmegil · · Score: 3, Insightful
    I think part of the problem is that Sysadmin did their best to offend the TPJ subscribers they inherited.

    • Content was somewhat redundant, with perl articles in the Sysadmin section as well as the TPJ section.
    • Only 3 or so real TPJ articles every other issue (at least it seemed pretty sparse) as opposed to the 8 or more in the old TPJ.
    • Most damning, if Sysadmin treated everyone like they did me.... As soon as the two merged I was inundated with snail-mail spam. Eventually I figured out that some code on the address meant it came from Sysadmin, and I called and complained. They told me I could opt out, why was this a problem? At least I got opted out and the flow had slowed way down since then.
    I had already renewed my subscription (boy do I regret that doubly now) but wasn't planning on renewing again anyway. Not because TPJ wasn't wanted, but because what I was getting in Sysadmin wasn't really TPJ any more, and Sysadmin itself isn't of any interest or use to me and they abused the relationship.
    --
    7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
    1. Re:No Real Surprise by andyo · · Score: 2

      I never felt that SysAdmin was the right place for TPJ articles. The typical system administrator writes scripts to parse logfiles and such; he or she has no need for the envelope-pushing, clever techniques promoted by TPJ. TPJ was a wonderful journal with high standards for content and editing (and layout, back when it was a stand-alone publication). I miss it. Incidentally, I still like SysAdmin too.

  13. O'Reilly to publish 'best of' anthologies by jacobito · · Score: 5, Informative

    In case you haven't heard, O'Reilly will be compiling and publishing three anthologies of the best articles from the Perl Journal:

    Games, Diversions, and Perl Culture
    Web, Graphics and Perl TK
    Computer Science and Perl Programming

    If you've never read TPJ before (or even if you have), be sure to grab one of these books when they come out. TPJ set a high standard of quality, with articles that were intelligent, entertaining, and usually a bit quirky.

    1. Re:O'Reilly to publish 'best of' anthologies by BrookHarty · · Score: 2

      Speaking of resources, where is a good place to hang out and read/chat about perl? Which IRC network, Which Message Forum. Where do all the perl gurus hang? I hear people are dropping from usenet and going to message boards, so which ones?

      Thanks!

  14. Free Software Programmer Magazine by MikeFM · · Score: 2

    I'd really like to see a magazine that covers all of opensource programming. Perl, Python, PHP, MySQL, GCC, bash scripting, opensource libraries, opensource tools, free codecs, etc. Everything a programmer that develops opensource software or with opensource software could want and no commercial crap we don't want. Something like Dr. Dobbs but covering only opensource.

    If it covers more topics it'll have a wider audience which in turn will give it more advertisers. SysAdmin is a good magazine but it really isn't programmer-centric or 100% opensource so there probably is room for another magazine out there.

    --
    At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
  15. SysAdmin no longer compelling by arfy · · Score: 2

    I buy SysAdmin at shops because the mail delivery here is atrocious; I've tried subscribing to magazines in the past and it never has worked. I was annoyed at the diminishing page count in SysAdmin. The Perl Journal and Elizabeth Zinkann's book review column were the main reasons I continued buying it. They dumped the latter at the beginning of the year and now they're removing the remaining reason. I'll still browse it and buy a copy now and then if it has a really superior article on some topic I consider vital but I'm no longer compelled to complete the set.